Wearable devices (WD) are using cell phones or other cellular enabled devices such as tablets and laptop computers, commonly referred to as user equipment (UE) as a relay to a cellular network. In a wireless environment with many battery-limited devices, such as wearables and many machine type communications/Internet of things (MTC/IoT) devices, scaling of conventional wireless service quickly becomes a problem. This issue is begun to be addressed with the paradigm of a “relay UE”, i.e., a less battery-limited UE such as a conventional smartphone that can relay communications between one or more devices and the network. The relay UE (R-UE) acts as a communications proxy for the other devices, allowing them to disable their power-intensive wireless wide area network (WWAN) connections and operate on a low-power, short-range link with the R-UE. This scenario may be described as an “indirect path” connection to the network, in contrast to the “direct path” of an over-the-air WWAN connection to a base station.